Trump’s Attacks on Trans Rights Have Real Consequences

Hello, I’m Daymia Rousseau, a UCSC Intern reporting for KSQD. The Trump Administration’s attacks on DEI programs have hit especially hard when it comes to access to gender affirming care for trans youth. Regardless of the intense pressure on schools by the Department of education to remove all forms of “gender ideology”, many schools and healthcare settings are challenging this position and moving to protect trans youth.

Adam : “There are implicit and explicit impacts that trans youth, and trans young adults, are experiencing right now. The explicit ones…are that Gender affirming care is becoming more difficult to come by if you are a transgender person under the age of 18. Even in our area. ”

That’s Adam Spickler. Adam is a trans man, and a member of Cabrillo College’s board of trustees, an elected member of the Santa Cruz Democratic Party, and is currently involved with the Queer Youth Task Force. Given Adam’s credentials,,  I asked him how Trump and the GOP’s incentive to target “gender ideology” has impacted the community.

Adam  “So, if you are a young person in Santa Cruz county, who in the …last 9 months…has realized that your gender identity might require – gender affirming care. For the first time ever, having a conversation with your doctor is pretty scary. And not knowing whether your doctor is affiliated with a healthcare providing agency that offers gender affirming care, you might have less information provided to you. Because healthcare affiliates and healthcare providers, understandably, are scared to get flagged in a larger way, as ‘providing’ gender affirming care. …We’ve watched how the federal government has gone after them, legally, and illegally. Threatening to withhold grant money if they do provide gender affirming care.”

So, healthcare providers are hesitant to advertise that they offer gender affirming due to the potential financial risk & political backlash from the federal government – regardless of whether they actually provide it or not; therefore limiting its accessibility. Or, as was the case this August at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, preemptive measures may be taken by healthcare providers in the wake of the administration’s demands, regardless of their legality. Difficulty getting a passport that matches one’s identity and reducing health access are two explicit threats, but equally concerning are the attempts to erase trans identities. Again, Adam Spickler.

Adam…But the implicit messages that are part of, and go beyond those two things, are the ways in which permission is being given. At best, to be dismissive in acknowledging trans identities. And, at worst, being violent… that is on the rise.”

Adam’s comments made me especially curious about the ways in which trans youth and elders are able to circumvent these changes. Being a prominent trans figure in the Santa Cruz community,

Adam : “… I have been terrified of the reality of being trans like I never have been before… I have never been more aware than I have been, the last few months, of what it must feel like, all of your life, to be visibly marginalized. …Having such a target on our backs now, from white nationalists…from people who feel emboldened to call transgender people ‘terrorists’ – completely wrong…but to be utilizing that false information to target trans people in a really scary government, at the same time the federal government wants to give credibility to those claims…And it is terrifying in a way I never understood until it was happening to me.”

Adam points out that different groups, depending on ethnic identity, may experience these impacts in different ways. This is especially relevant when you consider that DEI programs, of which are under direct attack from the department of education, encompass all these concepts under that umbrella term; intersecting in complicated ways. So how is the current  What can we learn